Notes on usability and related things by a project manager who manages electronic publishing projects.

December 04, 2012

SEO and SEM vendors and consultants appreciate me too much

I like getting comments. I don't always get around to moderating them quickly, but do like to see things that contribute to the discussion. I quickly learned that I did have to moderate the comments, because so many of them are nothing about me or my site - there is usually a lot of spam advertising to weed out.

Another thing I've noticed is that a great way to get a lot of brief, generic statements of thanks is to post something about Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or Search Engine marketing (SEM), or about social media strategy. Its nice to see an industry that is so eager to educate the public about how to do this yourself (at least at a basic level), rather then to engage some of the many consultancies that can offer help. Or wait - would it be just too cynical to think that some of these comments aren't about me at all, but are about getting a comment which bears an inbound link back to the writer's SEO or SEM site? The number of links you have into your site from relevant, reputable sources has a big effect on how you rank on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and their competitors, so the temptation is clearly there. Nah, surely not....

Let's see. From my recent comments:

"This is a good post. This post gives truly quality information. I’m
definitely going to look into it. Really very useful tips are provided
here. thank you so much. Keep up the good works..."

This exact quote is found 186,000 times by Google, with the same author. "Allen", you are one generous guy. OK, let's face it, you're a robot, aren't you...

Now of course, lets not damn everyone - the SEO and SEM industry has very professional and honourable people in it. But it's not necessarily easy for clients to sort the sheep from the goats. I'm very glad to publish comments from SEO, SEM and social media consultants, if I feel it's intended as a contribution to my site, not just to yours.

It will be interesting to see what, if any, comments this post gets...

2 Comments

LOL Chris, very funny how long do you think it will be before Allen "The robot" finds this post. Too many bots. But agree with you about good people about. I've had some good freelance work done from reputable SEO people.